A SEAL Wolf Christmas (17 page)

Bjornolf wasn’t sure what to say to Anna about Nathan and Jessica. He enjoyed cuddling with her now as mated wolves in the privacy of their own place, and he knew they needed the time to get to know each other like this. Having Nathan and Jessica living with them with babies on the way?

He let out his breath and continued to stroke her arm as the fire crackled in the hearth and the Christmas tree lights lent a holiday ambience to the sofa-bed play they’d just experienced. “When it was just Nathan, I considered his staying with us. Now that he’s got a mate and maybe babies on the way, he’ll have the help of the whole pack behind him. I’m thinking that they might need a place of their own, close to pack members who can assist them,” Bjornolf said.

Anna turned and snuggled her soft cheek against his chest and didn’t say anything.

“What do you think?”

He thought she’d fallen asleep when she didn’t respond, and he began to caress her bare shoulder again.

“What about us and the pack?” she asked.

He looked down at her. She turned her chin up and met his gaze.

“Hunter’s pack?”

“Maybe it’s time for us to join one,” she said. “Like Hunter’s. Here on the Oregon coast.”

He went back to rubbing her arm. “Yeah, maybe it is. Hunter wouldn’t be too bad as a pack leader. He might consider letting us join.”

“He’s good. And I’m sure he’d jump at the chance to have us in the pack.”

“You’re not thinking I should join his team as well, are you?” Bjornolf was ready, but he had to hear what Anna thought first.

“We couldn’t handle missions without you.”

He nodded.

She chuckled. “Glad you’re not conceited or anything.”

He smiled and kissed the top of her head. “So what about the kids?”

“We can’t stay here. This is one of Meara’s cabins to rent. So I’m thinking we’ll need a house.”

“Okay,” Bjornolf said.

“On the coast.”

Bjornolf nodded. “I like the area. Close to other pack members. Finn’s got that property farther south of here. He’s trying to sell the land. Maybe we could make an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

She smiled. “I like that idea. Beautiful vista. What do you think about us having a garage apartment? Or a mother-in-law house behind ours?”

“Nathan’s got money, you know. His parents left him money and a home that he also sold.”

“Okay. So he could buy his own place,” Anna said.

“But you want him close by.” Bjornolf studied her expression, noticing that even though she didn’t want to let on that she had a mothering instinct, she had one.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “He reached out to us first. He made me view Christmas in a different light and brought us closer together. How long would it have been if you had continued to ghost missions before we got this far on our own?”

Bjornolf snorted. “Not long.”

She looked up at him, brows raised quizzically.

“I seriously contemplated changing cabana arrangements when we stayed at that jungle town.”

She laughed. “You know Allan and Paul were trying to get a reaction from you.”

“That’s why I whispered in your ear. I was dying to kiss you.”

“And you did. Some kiss.” She licked his nipple and snuggled tighter against him. “Nathan made us recognize how important the pack is. I want to see him and Jessica do well.”

“We’ll discuss it with them and see what they want to do.” Bjornolf wasn’t sure he was ready to be a surrogate grandfather when he hadn’t even had his own kids yet. He ran his hand over Anna’s belly. He was working on that, though.

“We haven’t even talked about our schedule for after this business is finished,” she said.

“Schedule?” he asked. He hadn’t found anything in her profile that indicated she was fanatical about scheduling herself for anything on a regular basis.

“Sparring practice,” she said.

“Every day of the week,” he wholeheartedly agreed. He definitely would ensure that they had one room for sparring in their new home—and whatever else came up in the process. “And massages.”

“You had regular masseuses rubbing your muscles down after a workout?” She looked cynically at him.

“No, but now that I’m going to have a regular sparring partner and she’s you, I’m adding massages to the schedule. After the workout. Maybe before… to loosen us up a bit.”

She chuckled. “Yeah. Like we’re going to get any workouts done then.”

“Oh, I’ll guarantee you that we’ll get workouts. Plenty of them.”

Still grinning, she shook her head. “And weekly trips to the firing range.”

“Gotcha,” he said.

“If I get a mission that you
aren’t
invited to go on, then what?” she asked.

“I’ll go. Just ghost you.”

“Okay. If you get a mission that I can’t go on?”

He hesitated to answer. If the job was too dangerous, he wanted her home. He was certain she wouldn’t like that answer. He’d even thought of saying she could go on a different mission without him. But he couldn’t go along with it. For one thing, he didn’t want her anywhere on a dangerous job without him watching her back. For another, he was certain she wouldn’t appreciate that he’d sound like he was telling her what she could and couldn’t do.

He smiled and kissed her head. She was watching him, observing him as if she could read every thought going through his mind. He finally said, “If someone asks me to take on a job that’s too dangerous for you to go on, it’s most likely too dangerous for me.”

He loved the way she smiled up at him, and that led to him kissing her all over again.

***

The fire had gone out, but the Christmas lights were still twinkling on the tree when Bjornolf’s phone rang in the laundry room around two that morning. He carefully replaced the cheery, yellow-and-red quilted comforter over a sleeping Anna and then sprinted for the room.

He missed the call but saw the text.
Call me. Nathan.

Bjornolf hit autodial as he pulled Anna’s white sweater out of the washing machine and laid it out gently on top of the dryer to dry. He stared at the streaks of light brown and frowned.

The phone was asking him to leave a message, so he did. Then Bjornolf pulled her jacket out of the wash. Pale mud stains streaked the front and the back. He checked the labels on the jacket and sweater, and decided it was time for some online shopping. He left the jacket to soak some more.

He opened a browser on his phone and began searching for a replacement for Anna’s lacy white sweater. Elated to find the online version of the store, he clicked on the link for sweaters and saw hers on the first page.

He glanced at the color selections. Ice white! Yes! He began to click on the links to the other colors just to see what they looked like. Stunning Black. Ecru. Royal Blue. Red Hot, Pleasing Purple. Hell, yeah, he’d have to get them all. She’d look amazing in any of the colors. Then he looked for white fleece jackets, found one, and ordered it, too.

In the meantime, he tried calling Nathan again.

“Bjornolf,” Nathan said, his breath short as if he’d run to get the phone.

“Yeah, what’s up?” Bjornolf let the water out of the laundry sink, squeezed the excess water out of each article of clothing, and then threw them into the washing machine.

“Jessica and I couldn’t sleep. She told me there’s a safe in her parents’ home where they keep important papers. She thought it might help us find some answers about the DEA agents or maybe even about her birth.”

“The feds will have a search warrant and investigate the deaths,” Bjornolf said.

“Yeah. If they can find the safe—it’s hidden. Even if they do, would they be looking into her birth records? What if they open the safe and just take everything? Then we’ve lost the chance to learn who her parents were.”

“There might not be any record of her birth. We make up our own birth records when we need to because we live so long that we have to change our records from time to time. We homeschool our children so they don’t go to public school.”

“She did.”

“Okay, so she would have had some records. Falsified maybe. It might not help.”

Nathan didn’t say anything.

Bjornolf said, “What’s going on, Nathan? Why do you really want to go to the house?”

“Jessica says that they’ve got some evidence against the Wentworths,” Nathan said. “She heard her parents talking about it. Her dad knows William Wentworth is up to his eyeballs in illegal stuff in Colombia. Everton’s mother died two years before his father. Before that, the will stated that if both parents should die, the estate would be divided equally between William, Jeff, and Roger. If either parent died first, the will remained the same. After Everton’s mother died, the will was changed.

“William coerced their father to alter the will. When their father died, all the money was left to William and Jeff. Roger got a dollar from the estate, showing that the father hadn’t left Roger out of the will by accident. That was all he got. He and Dottie talked about it a lot. A year has passed and they are still mad that William cheated him out of the estate.”

Bjornolf frowned. “So he had evidence to blackmail William.”

“That’s what we figure. Hunter said your team might have been set up. What if the evidence is in the safe?”

“All right. I’ll check it out.”

“We’re coming with you.” Nathan sounded both eager and adamant.

“No.” Bjornolf didn’t need the kids getting in trouble if he and Anna get caught trying to get into a safe in the Evertons’ home.

“We have to. Jessica’s the only one who knows where the safe is hidden. And I’m not letting her go alone.”

Bjornolf suspected that if she told him where it was located, he could find it. He couldn’t fault Nathan for wanting to help. Or be first on the scene if Bjornolf and Anna did learn the truth about Jessica. “Can she get into the safe?”

“She thinks so. You’re bringing Anna, aren’t you?”

Bjornolf would rather let her sleep, but he wasn’t leaving her behind. “Yeah.”

“We’ll meet you there in half an hour.”

“I’ll let Hunter give the family you’re staying with a heads-up that you’ll be meeting us there. If you get there first, wait for us before you enter the house.”

“Will do.”

They ended the conversation and Bjornolf called Hunter.

“Yeah,” Hunter answered the phone, sounding half asleep.

Bjornolf relayed the information to him, though normally he would have just done his job and not informed anyone he was doing it. He kind of liked the idea of having backup and not being out on a limb all by himself for a change.

Now, Hunter was fully awake. “Who do you need?”

“Jessica and Nathan are meeting us there.”

“I don’t really care for that setup,” Hunter said, but he didn’t object. He trusted Bjornolf to do what was right.

“I know. Me, neither. If she’s the only one who can show us where the safe is and can get into it, I’m going to let them go along to help out.”

“I’ll send Finn and our police officers for backup. They’ll keep perimeter watch in case anyone comes snooping around.”

“All right. We’re on our way.” Bjornolf ended the call, saw a shadow move into his space, and glanced at the entryway to the laundry room. He smiled to see Anna dressed all in black. Boots. Jeans. Turtleneck. And jacket. Her hair was tucked into a bun.

He took her into his arms and kissed her. “Good morning.”

She slid her hand down his naked chest. “Are you going as a wolf, or are you getting dressed first?”

“If we had time, I’d take you back to bed first.”

“Promises, promises.” She glanced at the mud left in the laundry sink. “Thanks for taking care of the rest of the clothes. I’ll just clean this out while you get dressed.” Then she looked at her sweater and jacket laid out on top of the dryer. She didn’t say a word, but he could see by her expression how disappointed she was. He wanted to tell her he’d bought replacements, but he also wanted them to be a surprise.

“Sorry for the late-night clandestine operation,” he said, trying to cheer her up.

“All in the job.” She smiled up at him. “We can make up for it when we get home.”

“Too bad we couldn’t get started on making up for it
before
we go.”

When they reached the tree farm, Anna couldn’t help but look in the direction of the pit Everton had dumped her into. She’d felt the cold seep into her bones as soon as she and Bjornolf arrived.

“You alright?” Bjornolf reached for Anna’s hand, giving it a squeeze.

“Yeah. I’m okay. I worry about Jessica’s frame of mind, though. The only father she knows is in jail, and no one’s been able to reach her mother. Now she has all these other issues to deal with… I wonder how she’s handling it.”

“She’s lucky to have Nathan to help her through it. Can you imagine if we’d had each other when we were teens to deal with all our issues?”

Anna couldn’t even imagine having hooked up with Bjornolf as a teen. “We would have been a mess. Getting into all kinds of trouble.”

He laughed. “Yeah, you’re probably right. But we would have had fun. There they are,” Bjornolf said as Nathan and Jessica moved out of the darkness.

Except for their blue jeans, Anna noted, they were dressed in all black just like she and Bjornolf were, as if they were teen versions of undercover operatives.

Jessica was a pretty blonde with dark brown eyes, and Anna thought she looked sweet and innocent, except for the fact that she was a mated wolf and could be expecting.

Jessica was tucked under Nathan’s arm as if he was protecting her. Jessica’s gaze settled on Anna. From the intense look Jessica gave her, Anna knew she wanted to say something to her.

“Jessica,” Anna finally said, her voice hushed, as if giving her permission to ask whatever she wanted to.

“I didn’t… use it yet.” Jessica’s gaze remained steady on Anna. “The directions said to use it first thing in the morning.”

“Ah.”
The
pregnancy
test.

Nathan took a deep breath.

“I want… I want you to read the results with me when I do it.” Jessica was still watching Anna, studying her reaction.

“Sure. I will.” Anna suddenly had a frog in her throat.

Jessica swallowed, her eyes shimmering with tears. “I… I can’t tell my mom about this. I mean, about any of this. Nathan, the wolf stuff. Not any of this.” She said it as though she was asking a question.

“No, you can’t. Do you have any clue where your mom would have gone?” Anna needed to have a heart-to-heart talk with Jessica. Having to keep the werewolf part of their existence secret from humans was essential.

“I think my Aunt Helen had to speak with her. But I called there and no one was answering the phone. I’m kind of worried about her. Nathan told me that he saw my uncle kissing my mom, and… I just figured it was family stuff. But… Nathan said it wasn’t that kind of kiss. What if Aunt Helen found out about it? I’m just glad my dad wasn’t here at the time. He probably would have killed Uncle William.” Jessica took a deep breath, thinking about how her father had tried to murder Anna.

“Hunter’s looking into it.”

Anna wondered how Jessica was dealing with her dad’s actions. In that instant, Anna saw herself as a teen again. No way did she want Jessica to have to carry this burden all on her own. She wanted Jessica to know she could speak with her about any of it. After what Anna had been through, if Jessica was pregnant, she’d refer her to Tessa in the matter. Gladly.

Jessica didn’t look happy, but nodded and then motioned to the house. “I’ll show you where the safe is. We’ll go in the back way through the kitchen.”

Anna’s phone rang, and when she answered it, Finn said, “We’re in place on the perimeter of the tree farm. Yale’s on his way to give us more backup if we need it, since he’s handling the case.”

“Good. We’re about to enter the house.”

Anna relayed the news to Bjornolf that backup was in place.

“Who is this Yale guy?” Bjornolf sounded very much like a jealous mate.

“He’s got a mate, Bjornolf. Don’t worry. I met him on an assignment in Washington, DC. He went to Yale, so that’s what we call him. Smart as can be.”

“Too bad he isn’t on Hunter’s team.”

“Some of us need to be in the field with humans. Like I was. Like you and Hunter and his team were.”

“Agreed.” Bjornolf unlocked the door to the kitchen with the key Jessica provided, gun readied, then pushed the door open with a squeak. “You stay here with the kids, and I’ll check the house out.”

Anna nodded. She could easily check the house while Bjornolf stayed with the kids, but she knew it wouldn’t have looked right. Nathan would expect Bjornolf to protect her and the kids. Even as highly trained as she was, the perceptions still reigned—big bad he-wolf protects she-wolf and offspring.

“Clear,” Bjornolf said after several minutes, then ushered them inside. He took Anna’s arm and pulled her aside and whispered, “Gray wolves, old scent.”

Anna stared at him, uncomprehending.

“Don’t you smell it?”

She took a deeper whiff and frowned. “Man and woman’s.”

Bjornolf nodded.

“The safe is in the basement,” Jessica said as she walked into the posh kitchen, everything crisp, clean, and white—cabinets, ceiling, tile countertops, blue and white chairs—with a warm golden floor and table, and big windows overlooking a field of evergreens covered in white.

She led the way down the stairs. “It’s a rec room. Pool table, exercise room.”

A massive, gray slate fireplace took up one wall, sooty and full of ashes, giving off a smoky smell. Dark wood paneling covered two walls, the ceiling, and the floor. A large TV sat against one wall, brown leather couches configured around it. Two narrow windows were situated high above, evergreen shrubs blocking what little light might have come through the windows on a day that wasn’t overcast.

The smell of bleach and lemon-scented wax cleaner masked the odor of smoke from the fireplace that would have dominated the room.

Jessica headed past the billiard table, a rowing machine, and a treadmill sitting against the opposite wall. A dartboard in a cabinet took center stage against a corkboard wall, perfect for really lousy shots.

“Do you come down here a lot?” Anna asked.

Jessica shook her head. “I don’t like it.” She shuddered.

Bjornolf noticed her trembling a little.

“I’ve never seen a dartboard like this,” Anna said.

“It’s one of those electronic ones.” Nathan motioned to the scoreboard. “It keeps score on an LED screen and has voice commands and makes sound effects.”

Anna shook her head. What happened to doing things the old-fashioned way?

Jessica unhooked the dartboard and set it on the floor to expose a wall safe. “He figured if anyone ever searched for his safe, they’d look in his office or bedroom. Maybe the living room. But a basement? Behind a dartboard? No one would think of that.”

Heavy-duty gray wall safe. Standard dial combination.

“You don’t happen to know the combination, do you?” Bjornolf asked Jessica.

“I only know one of the numbers is six. I was watching him when he saw me and told me to run back upstairs. He was angry, but I’m sure he didn’t think I could ever figure out the other numbers. That was the only time I ever got close when he was unlocking it.”

Bjornolf got on his cell phone to Hunter. “Okay, we’ve got six as the first number of the combination. Any ideas for the rest?”

“Give me a sec.” Hunter started talking to someone nearby. “Rourke, in your investigations, have you come across any numbers that might have been used on a safe?”

The speakerphone was on as Rourke responded. “Yeah, often wedding dates or birth dates. Sometimes owners won’t change the combination on a safe after it’s installed and it’ll be all zeroes. You said the first number is six?” Rourke paused. “Bingo. Try one and then five. The numbers correspond to the month and day that the Evertons’ daughter was born.”

Click
.

“It worked,” Bjornolf told Hunter. He pushed the lever down and pulled the safe door open.

Inside the safe, bundles of money were stacked on one shelf. A huge stack of papers rested at the bottom of the safe. Bjornolf pulled out the papers and said to Hunter, “Thousands of dollars’ worth of cash stashed in the safe. I can’t imagine why someone who owns a Christmas tree farm would have this much cash on hand.”

The papers included birth certificates, a marriage certificate, titles to vehicles—including the work vehicles used by employees at the farm—and the deed to the tree farm.

Bjornolf said to Hunter, “Just going through the papers now.” He handed some of the documents to Nathan and Jessica.

They carried them over to the pool table, spread them out, and began concentrating on the birth certificates and the Evertons’ marriage certificate. “Everton was Roger Wentworth, married to Dorothy Slade on the marriage certificate. And here’s a birth certificate for Angela Wentworth. Then a death certificate dated three years later for Angela Wentworth,” Jessica said, her voice soft and upset.

Anna looked at the death certificate. “She died when you would have been just a toddler. Did your adoptive mom ever talk to you about it?”

Everyone looked up from the documents they were reading and studied her. Jessica took a deep breath and nodded. “Just once. I was looking through some pictures my mom had taken of me at Christmastime with Santa, and I came across some photos of Mom holding a toddler I didn’t know. I asked who she was. My mom said she was her daughter born three years before they adopted me. It happened when they lived in Portland. Mom was at the mall shopping. A nanny was watching Angela and she got away from her. She ran out into the street and a car hit her. My mom gave me a sad smile and said then they adopted me. She wouldn’t talk about it after that.”

Jessica sorted through the papers she’d been looking at. “No birth certificate for me. No adoption papers. Nothing. I don’t even know if my first name is really Jessica.”

Nathan looked unsure. Anna joined Jessica and pulled her into an embrace. “We’re all trying to learn the truth. You’re not alone in this.”

Jessica nodded and gave her a hug back. “Thank you.” Then she wiped her eyes and went back to looking at the papers with Nathan. She paused and glanced at Anna and Bjornolf. “Nathan talked to me about the dead men.”

Anna and Bjornolf looked at him.

He let out his breath and shrugged. “She smelled the dead bodies, too. Like we did. I told you. When she and I went on that walk that time. I thought she might have been here at the time. Heard something. No one has asked her.”

“And?” Bjornolf asked.

Jessica sighed. “I overheard a couple of men talking with Dad. I stayed home from school because I had a bad cold that day and was in my bedroom playing a video game, but you know how our hearing is. They asked Dad how well he knew my Uncle William. He said he was his half brother. They asked if he knew anything about Uncle William’s business.

“He said sure, Uncle William was into pharmaceuticals. They wanted to know if he was involved in anything illegal. My dad said for them to follow him outside because he had to get some work done, and they could talk while he worked on some new plantings. That was it. He must have gone to get his coat and gloves and stuff, and then left with them, shut the door, and was off.”

Stuff? More like a gun, Anna suspected.

“When was this?” Bjornolf asked.

“It was a Monday morning. We’re closed on Mondays to give the farmhands a break for working over the weekend. Dad catches up on work even when we’re closed. So we didn’t have any customers.”

“How did your dad and William get along?” Anna asked.

“It was weird. They hated each other but needed each other for jobs… somehow. Not sure. Dad worked for Uncle William before he got the tree farm. So they were kind of okay back then. But then Uncle William cut Dad out of their father’s will, and Dad said he wasn’t going to work for his older half brother any longer. I… don’t think he knew William was having an affair with my mom. If he knew, I’m certain that Dad would have killed Uncle William.”

Anna nodded. “I’d have to agree with you there.” She examined the deed to the farm while Bjornolf was searching through some old papers having to do with plants in the Amazon. They were dated thirteen to fifteen years ago, shortly before Jessica was adopted by the Evertons. After comparing handwriting on documents written, signed, and dated by Everton, Bjornolf could tell Everton was not the same person who had written the list of rainforest plants.

Anna touched Bjornolf’s arm and he saw the worried look in her eyes. “The Everton farm belonged to an Oliver and Jenna Silverstone,” she said quietly.

Silver. Gray wolves. They often used gray, grey, or silver in their names.

“The deed’s old,” she said.

He scrutinized it. “It is. But why would Everton have this old deed and not the one that shows he and his wife now own the property?” The situation looked more sinister than he had first suspected. “Hunter,” Bjornolf said over the phone, “I’m scanning the deed and sending it to you.” He waited.

“Got it. We’ll check into the deed as soon as the county courthouse opens this morning,” Hunter said.

“Sounds good. What do you make of this?” Bjornolf asked Anna, showing her the papers listing the rainforest plants and their chemical properties.

“What if the Silverstones were doing research on plants in the Amazon?”

Bjornolf agreed. “Hunter, we’ve got more. Listen to this. In the documents we found, someone made a detailed report of plants in the Amazon. Chemical properties, common plant names and botanical names, what they might be used for. There are weeks of detailed reports collected over two years, with breaks in between dates for several months, and then more reports as if the researcher left the Amazon, then returned and continued with the studies for another few months.”

Bjornolf read a small portion of the notes to Hunter to give him an idea.

“
Amor
seco
, a dense leafy perennial grass, rich in flavonoids and alkaloids.

“
Ajos
sacha
, leaf power, calming effect for some, not sure of effectiveness, causes thirst.

“
Uncaria
tomentosa
, cat’s claw vine bark and root powder, strengthens immune system, similar to a wolf’s.